


Thunder In The Mountains

by MagicaDraconia16



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Action/Adventure, Alternate Universe - Dystopia, Beginning of a Beautiful Friendship, Bucky Barnes-centric, Gen, Marvel Universe Big Bang 2019, Memory Loss
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-06
Updated: 2019-11-06
Packaged: 2021-01-24 07:47:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,702
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21334726
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MagicaDraconia16/pseuds/MagicaDraconia16
Summary: In a future time, where everyone knows the outside is dangerous, Bucky Barnes finds himself coming to know a band of Rebels, currently led by the outrageous Iron Man. It doesn't take long before he discovers that what he - and "everyone" - knows is wrong, and for the Rebels to set his life on a different path.
Kudos: 7
Collections: Marvel Big Bang 2019





	Thunder In The Mountains

**Author's Note:**

> Heavily influenced/inspired by Toyah's song of the same name: [Thunder In The Mountains](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RtPj_iWln0s)
> 
> Me: *plans out a Big Bang fic* 
> 
> Me: *sees mention of Toyah Wilcox somewhere, suddenly remembers her intense love for the video of Thunder In The Mountains and goes to watch it* 
> 
> Brain: *suddenly imagines Tony in Toyah's place and demands a fic about that. Right now. This instant. _I said now, damnit_* 
> 
> And then Bucky takes hold of the reins and drives off, despite the fact he has _no_ idea what on earth he's doing... 
> 
> So, yeah, vaguely dystopian fic, wibbly-wobbly timeline...?

He was dead. Or dreaming. One of the two.

Staring up from the floor of whatever vehicle he was lying in, Bucky was convinced he was hallucinating. The male driver was balancing himself on a small platform, horse’s reins loosely held in one hand, swaying with the movement. His other hand held a long whip of what seemed to be electricity, circling it above his head, showering himself in sparks. But that wasn’t what convinced Bucky that he had to be unconscious.

What _did_ was the fact that the man’s hair was a giant, glorious riot of red and gold, somehow spread out around his head like an old-time drawing of saints with halos.

With a whoop, the man cracked the whip at something in front of him, and a loud buzz almost covered the sound of a pained scream.

“What…?” Bucky started, attempting to lever himself up onto his elbows.

The man glanced over his shoulder and grinned widely at Bucky before turning back. “Glad you’re awake!” he said. “Was worried I’d been carting a corpse for the last several miles. How’s your head?”

“Umm…” Bucky pressed a hand to his temple and grimaced when he pulled it away coated in a sticky, bloody residue. “Attached, at least.”

The driver let out a bark of laughter. “Always a good start!” he agreed, and cracked the whip to the side. Whatever it hit, it caused a fountain of sparks to cascade up. Bucky winced but they were already past whatever it was before the sparks could land on them.

He finally managed to drag himself upright but found that the sides of the vehicle were still taller, so was none the wiser about where they were heading. In contrast, the back of the vehicle was alarming low, so he could make out the silhouette of a mountain behind them, with a plume of smoke that was almost black drifting from a spot about halfway up.

“Where exactly are we, and where are we going?” he asked, glancing up at the driver. “And what happened to me?”

“Well—” the other man paused as he cracked the whip again, at something that was obviously approaching them from the other side. “—we are currently halfway through the Interstate Pass, and we’re heading for Yorknew. As for you—” he paused again, swinging the whip above his head before bringing it down with a sharp _crack_. “I may have caused a _little_ explosion in the Sanctuary, and when I was, uh, avoiding, shall we say? Yeah, when I was _avoiding_ the Gatekeepers, I found you half buried under a pile of rubble, unconscious.”

Bucky frowned. “So you just decided to bring me along?” he asked. “Why?”

The man looked over his shoulder again, and his smile this time was less manic and more puzzled, as though he didn’t understand the question. “Why not?” he responded. Then his gaze shot forward again, and he made a growling noise. “Oh, no, you don’t!” he exclaimed, and transferred the whip into the hand that was already holding the reins. Once that hand was free, he reached below the edge of the vehicle and, without even looking, pressed a series of buttons. Bucky was rather alarmed to notice that the final one was big and red. Nothing good ever came of _that_ kind of button.

There was a pause, and then a _whoosh!_ from the front end of the vehicle. Ten seconds later, something that seemed alarmingly close to them exploded. The driver whooped in a fierce joy, and swung the whip over his head again, although more in an expression of triumph this time, rather than gearing up to hit whatever was pursuing them.

Bucky’s mouth fell open as he watched the mushrooming smoke cloud disappear behind them. “What the fuck was that?” he asked. His gaze also caught on the smoke that was still visible pouring from the mountain that was getting steadily smaller – the Sanctuary. “And what the _hell_ did you do to the Sanctuary?” he asked, awed. If that was a ‘little’ explosion, he didn’t want to see what the other man would consider a _big_ one.

“Just a little something of my own creation,” the man said, smugly. He abruptly made a _tsk_ing noise. “Hey, you think you can stand up a moment? I just need you to hold these steady for me.”

“Uh, sure?” It came out more as a question than a statement, but Bucky gamely reached up to grip one side of the vehicle, using that to help pull himself up to his feet. He swayed once he was up, as his blood objected to the sudden change in distance from the ground, and tightened his grip. He closed his eyes while he waited for his equilibrium to steady, then opened them again once he was sure he wasn’t going to keel straight back over. “_Holy shit_!” he blurted, instantly.

His travel companion laughed at him, but Bucky didn’t care. The thing pulling their vehicle wasn’t a horse, or a donkey or a mule or any kind of equine creature as Bucky had quite naturally thought it was. Although it was certainly equine _shaped_, the thing was made entirely of bright, gleaming _metal_.

“Oh, holy shit,” Bucky repeated, turning to look at the shorter man balancing on the driving platform. He couldn’t believe he hadn’t realised it as soon as he’d seen the other man’s hair. “You’re _Iron Man_,” he said, almost accusingly. “You’re the leader of the Rebels!”

The Sanctuary had been built in the middle of a mountain and stretched hundreds of miles underground, with several thousand people living there for safety, and the entire place had been repeatedly thrown into disarray by the actions of the Rebels, led for the last few years by the elusive figure known as Iron Man, so-called due to the variety of machines he liked to use to cause the chaos. His one distinguishing feature – always mentioned gleefully on the wanted posters – was the wild mane of brightly coloured hair.

Almost immediately, something in Iron Man’s expression changed. It was very subtle; Bucky didn’t think he would have seen it if he weren’t already exceedingly close to Iron Man. The Rebel leader was still smiling at him, but it was more cautious, more wary now.

“I am Iron Man,” he agreed. “Do I need to regret saving you?”

Bucky opened his mouth to say something indignant, then paused to consider the matter and slowly closed it again. He couldn’t blame Iron Man, considering he’d just pretty much accused the man of being himself.

“No,” he said, eventually. “I’m . . . sorry, about how I sounded. I was just surprised—”

Iron Man shook his head, but just as he opened his mouth to respond, he gave a twitch, as though something had startled him. He blinked twice and shook his head again. “Right, right, Patrolmen…” he said, apropos of nothing. Reminded of why Bucky had gotten to his feet in the first place, they both looked out at the surrounding landscape.

Bucky had never travelled on the Interstate Pass himself, nor had he known anyone who ever had, but he’d heard the stories, just like everyone else living in Sanctuary. It was rumoured to be a narrow strip of a material they didn’t make anymore, towering over a huge gaping chasm, open to the elements, pitted and rotten and one wrong step away from crumbling into pieces.

In reality, although it was indeed made of a substance that Bucky hadn’t seen before, the Interstate Pass was an extremely wide, absolutely solid path stretching across the landscape, with no chasm in sight. Instead, it wound its way through a series of low hills that were dotted with the odd ragged sapling.

Along with several figures pointing a rather large gun at them.

Bucky yelped in alarm, just as Iron Man shoved the mechanical creature’s reins at him. “Don’t drop those,” he said, as Bucky almost did precisely that. “They’re not needed for steering, per se – Jarvis knows where he’s going – but people don’t like seeing a car pull itself; they tend to think Jarvis is running away, even though he’s not your usual horse.”

Fumbling, Bucky managed to gather the reins into some kind of order. Iron Man was rummaging at the bottom of the vehicle, and when he straightened up again, his hands were enclosed in metal gloves. For a rather wild moment, Bucky wondered whether Iron Man was going to leap off the vehicle and go running at the Patrolmen, but then Iron Man raised his hands, palms out, to face them.

There was a brief whine in the air, and then two beams of bright light were shooting out at the Patrolmen. The Patrolmen turned to flee, but were too late, and too slow. The beams hit them straight in the back, and they were thrown forwards, their gun cartwheeling up into the air.

Iron Man gave a whoop of delight as the car thundered past their position. If the Patrolmen gained their feet again, Bucky couldn’t see them.

“What was _that_?” he asked, looking warily at the metal gloves.

“My own invention,” Iron Man replied, beaming proudly down at the gloves. “Arc technology.”

“Arc?”

Iron Man turned his hands over so that Bucky could see the palms. Inlaid in the middle were two circles of what looked like glass, with something that strongly resembled a small star trapped underneath. “Repulsors that run off an arc reactor,” he explained.

It didn’t actually explain _anything_ – Bucky still had no idea what on earth an ‘arc’ was, let alone an ‘arc reactor’ – but running for their lives wasn’t really the time or place to descend into a long, complicated technical discussion.

Instead, he watched as Iron Man stored the gloves back in the floor of the car and took the reins back from him.

“We should be through the worst of it now,” Iron Man said. “Probably be another couple of hours before we reach Yorknew. You can sit down again if you want.”

Bucky glanced around, but everywhere he could see all looked the same. “Yeah, I think I will,” he agreed, and slowly sank down to sit at the bottom of the car. Behind them, growing steadily smaller as the distance increased, smoke continued to pour from the Sanctuary.

* * *

“We’re here.”

Bucky jolted out of the doze he’d fallen into, lulled by the movement of the car. He blinked several times, waiting for his brain to catch up. When it did, he scrambled to get to his feet again.

Yorknew spread out in front of them, the ruins of old buildings lining the track they were on. Repair work had obviously been carried out by the few people who still lived here, as three storey tall buildings rose into the sky here and there. Bucky gazed up at one in awe as they passed it.

“Wow,” he breathed. “Imagine how long it must have taken to _build_ that. You can probably see for _miles_ from the roof!”

Iron Man smiled, but it was wistful. “You should see some of the scraps of old pictures we found,” he said. “Buildings that go up for miles, stretching until they touch the sky.”

Bucky shivered at even the thought of it. “I’ll leave the sky to the birds,” he said. “These are tall enough to suit me.”

“Not a fan of heights, huh?” Iron Man asked. “You aren’t the only one, even outside of Sanctuary.” He appeared to juggle the reins, and the car, which Bucky hadn’t even noticed had been slowing down, slowed even further, allowing it to make a turn off the main Pass and onto a narrower strip of road. “I’ll drop you off at the Tower,” he informed Bucky. “There’ll be someone there who can help you with whatever you need.”

“Oh. You . . . you aren’t staying there?” Bucky asked, tentatively. For some reason, the thought of Iron Man just dropping him off like a bunch of supplies was disheartening. Bucky wasn’t clear on a lot of things, but he _did_ know that he hated the thought of pity, or charity, or being a burden, and having to rely on a bunch of strangers – and likely Rebels, no less – would be all three.

Iron Man shook his head, his hair waving in the breeze of his own movement. “I stay there sometimes, whenever I’m in Yorknew,” he said, “but I spend most of my time at the Compound right now, out past the city limits.”

_The Rebel Compound_. Bucky didn’t need any further clarification. Even if he wanted to, there was no way Iron Man was taking him _there_; not when they’d only met, or rather when Bucky had only been rescued, just a few short hours ago. The Rebels wouldn’t be as successful as they were if they invited just anyone to visit their Compound.

As they drew to a halt, Bucky tilted his head back to study the place where he was likely going to be staying for a while. The Tower was a good four stories high, stretching far above all the one storey buildings at its foot. The sunlight sparked off all the windows it had, until Bucky was surprised he could see the top of it at all. People were coming and going through the door at the base. There were honestly more than Bucky had expected. The tales around Sanctuary implied that the outside world was pretty uninhabitable for people who _weren’t_ Rebels.

Iron Man tied off the reins onto a small stick just below the top lip of the car. “Jarvis, stay,” he said, unlatching one side of the car and pushing it open. “I won’t be long.” He leapt over the small lip then turned back to gesture to Bucky. “C’mon,” he encouraged. “I’ll introduce you to Pepper. She’s scarily efficient at, like, _everything_ she does, but she’s also the _best_ person to have on your side.”

Obediently, Bucky clambered out of the car, too. He would have given the strange metal creature a pat of thanks – since, after all, it had still worked hard, pulling the car and outrunning the Patrolmen – but Iron Man was already almost at the door of the Tower, and Bucky had to hurry to catch up to him.

The inside of the Tower was a lot cosier than Bucky had been expecting. Soft cushions and chairs were scattered around the ground floor, with doorways leading off into various other places deeper in the Tower. There were lots of pictures hanging on the walls. Bucky peered intently at one close to him. Surprisingly, it was of the interior of Sanctuary; a group of people gathered around one of the common firepits, obviously some kind of social meeting. They were laughing and waving bottles around in the air.

The picture was so good that Bucky could almost imagine himself being there as it happened. There was a person hidden almost behind the firepit that had long brown hair, like he did, and it wasn’t difficult to imagine being there with a group of friends, happy, celebrating . . . something that he couldn’t quite think of right now...

“_What_ have I told you?”

A stern female voice jerked Bucky back to his surroundings, and he blinked several times. Iron Man had made his way across the room and was now grinning at a redheaded lady. She looked . . . _pristine_, Bucky thought. As though no dirt or debris or anything nasty would ever dare to touch the cream-coloured blouse and beige-coloured trousers she wore. Her hair was drawn up into a neat twist, and her shoes had taller heels that Bucky thought existed. He’d never seen _any_ woman wear heels _that_ high in Sanctuary.

Overall, she reminded him of the images of old-time schoolmarms that he and . . . somebody had once come across. The way the woman had her arms folded across her chest and was glaring at Iron Man did nothing to dispel that impression.

“He was injured, Pep, I couldn’t just _leave_ him there!” Iron Man was protesting.

A sinking feeling crept over Bucky. They were arguing about _him_, about bringing him to Yorknew and letting him into the Tower.

The woman, Pep – _was she this ‘Pepper’ that Iron Man had mentioned?_ – shook her head at the Rebel leader. “Of course you couldn’t leave him there,” she said, and Bucky almost missed the rest of the conversation, his surprise at the casual way she accepted his presence so overwhelming and jarring. “But couldn’t you have asked Jarvis to send a message beforehand so we were ready for him?”

Bucky _did_ miss the reply that time. Jarvis may have been a marvel of a mechanical creature, but how could it have _possibly_ sent any message on ahead of himself and Iron Man? Was there another Jarvis, one that Iron Man had named the mechanical one after? A human left behind for whatever reason in Sanctuary? Although that still didn’t answer the question of how a message would manage to get here before them, because when exactly would Iron Man have known he was going to leave Bucky at the Tower...?

“—ou okay?” A brief touch over his shoulder jolted Bucky back to his surroundings, where Iron Man and Pep were standing in front of him, peering at him in concern.

Wondering how long they’d been trying to get his attention, and flushing at the thought that he must have seemed like a zoned out idiot, Bucky cleared his throat and forced a smile that felt horrendously fake, as if his facial muscles had forgotten how to do it.

“I’m fine,” he said. “Sorry. Just . . . thinking. Sorry. You were saying?”

The other two exchanged a quick glance but thankfully said nothing. Iron Man took a small step back and placed a hand on the woman’s shoulder. “This is Pepper Potts,” he said, proudly. “She runs this place, and most everywhere else, and keeps all of us reprobates in line.”

Pepper smiled at Bucky. “It’s a thankless job, but someone has to do it,” she said, and extended a hand towards him. “It’s nice to meet you, Mr...?”

“Uh, Barnes,” Bucky said, gingerly shaking her hand. “James Barnes, technically, but everyone just calls me Bucky.”

“Bucky,” Pepper agreed. “Well, welcome to the Tower, Bucky. Has T-_Iron Man_ told you anything about how things work here?” Bucky shook his head. “Hmm, what a surprise.” Pepper shot a sideways glance at Iron Man, who pulled a mock-offended face at her.

“That hurts, Pep, seriously,” he said. He gave an abrupt twitch. “Right, right, forgot, sorry!” he said hurriedly. He leaned over and gave Pepper a quick kiss on the cheek. “Jarvis is waiting,” he said in explanation, then turned and moved towards the front entrance, in a walk that didn’t _look_ as though it was a fast one, despite the fact it obviously was.

Pepper shook her head, but she seemed more amused than anything else. “If you’d like to follow me, Bucky, then I’ll show you to your room and explain how things work. I hope you don’t mind stairs; I’m afraid we’ve not quite got the hang of an elevator yet.”

“That’s okay,” Bucky assured her, and obediently followed after her as she began walking to one of the doorways.

She paused just before crossing it and gestured at the space around them. “We call this the Hub,” she told him, then her mouth twisted up into a wry smile, “mainly because Iron Man wanted to, and we couldn’t dissuade him otherwise.”

“Iron Man spends a lot of time here, then?” Bucky asked as they began moving again.

“He does,” confirmed Pepper, then a strange look passed over her face, as though the question and her own answer had amused her. “I’m sure you’ll see him quite often; it’s not as though you can miss him.” And again, that amusement, as though there was something else behind her words that Bucky just didn’t understand yet.

Although it could have just been at the truth of her own statement. With that hair, it _was_ difficult to overlook Iron Man in a crowd.

The tour itself didn’t take as long as Bucky had expected it might. All the offices and ‘business’ rooms, Pepper explained, were located on the ground floor, branching off from the Hub. The other three floors in the building were dwellings, homes bigger than any space Bucky had ever seen in Sanctuary. He wondered if that was usual for buildings on the outside – since they all knew that Sanctuary wasn’t the only group of humans left – or whether it was just an ‘Iron Man is involved’ thing.

“It’s a combination of both,” Pepper said when he finally mentioned it. “By necessity of its structure and our limitations when it comes to tools and equipment, housing in Sanctuary is small and cramped. We obviously have a lot more space out here that we can take advantage of. But, as you say, To-_Iron Man_ is involved, and everything tends to be bigger and grander when that happens.” She halted outside one of the rooms on the first floor. “This will be your room,” she said. “T-_Iron Man_ said that you weren’t fond of heights?”

Bucky briefly wondered when he’d had the chance to tell her that, then realised it must have been while he’d zoned out just after they’d arrived. “It’s just the idea of being up too high to see the ground,” he said. “But here’s fine, too. Thank you for taking me in.”

Pepper smiled at him. “Everything you’re likely to need is in there,” she said, rummaging in a pocket briefly before emerging with a small silver key. She handed it over to Bucky. “If there isn’t, then let me or May Parker know – she runs the housekeeping side – and we’ll see what we can do. Most everyone tends to gather in the Hub for the evening meal, but please don’t feel obliged to attend if you don’t want to, especially tonight.”

“Okay, thanks.” Bucky glanced briefly at the key in his hand, then stepped forward to insert it into the lock on the door. There was a series of clicks as he turned it and the door swung open.

“Good luck, and again, welcome to the Tower,” Pepper said from behind him. When he turned his head to reply, she was already walking away down the hall, back towards the stairwell entrance.

Idly, Bucky wondered just how busy she actually was, and how much time she’d just wasted showing him around this place.

The space he stepped into was the cleanest and most sterile looking place that he’d ever seen. It was so shiny in its neutral-ness that he felt as if he’d go blind looking at it too long. Although he wasn’t sure he wanted to go any further than where he was standing right in front of the door. He was filthy, covered in the dust of the Interstate Pass and whatever else had happened to him to leave him unconscious in the rubble that Iron Man had found him in back at Sanctuary. It felt sacrilegious to even _stand_ in the pristine room.

The only thing in the room that _wasn’t_ some form of white or beige was a painting on the wall opposite Bucky. It was a landscape, a view of somewhere high above hills and what appeared to be a forest. It was one side of the view from the very top of Sanctuary, although Bucky didn’t know just how he knew that; the information just suddenly _appeared_ in his brain.

The longer he stared at the painting, the dizzier he got, until his vision was swimming and it felt as though his head was about to roll right off his shoulders. He could even feel himself tilting forward, as an overwhelming surge of vertigo rolled over him.

Bucky found himself on his hands and knees, panting harshly and eyes screwed tightly shut. _What was THAT?_ he wondered. He didn’t like the thought of being too high off the ground, as he’d sort of mentioned to both Iron Man and Pepper, but for just the mere _sight_ of a _painting_ to affect him _this badly_?

Cautiously, he opened his eyes again. Ensuring that he kept his gaze lowered to the floor, he crawled over towards the wall where the painting hung, as his legs didn’t feel at all steady yet. Once underneath it, he reached up and flipped the painting over, before slumping against the wall in relief.

It was a good thing, he thought vaguely, that Pepper had said he wasn’t obliged to join everybody else for the evening meal tonight, as he was sure his condition right at that moment would raise some interesting questions, and unfortunately he didn’t have the interesting answers to go with them.

He closed his eyes as his system slowly returned to its normal equilibrium, but eventually acknowledged that he had to move, or else he was going to end up falling asleep leaning against the wall.

The main living area fed into a hallway longer than Bucky would have thought, which ended in a bedroom large enough for four people. There was another painting in there, too, but despite it also being a landscape – of some kind of jungle forest this time – it didn’t provoke any further feelings of vertigo. Which meant that Bucky could safely ignore it as he fell face-first onto the bed, and promptly dropped off into an uneasy sleep.

* * *

He awoke so abruptly, and so completely, that it almost felt like another wave of vertigo. Blinking, his gaze trailed around the room, as his mind tried to catch up to where he was and what he was supposed to be doing.

He was definitely _not_ in Sanctuary anymore, that much was clear by the light coming in through the glass panes. Sanctuary was a mountain – it didn’t _have_ glass panes. This room was large and airy. He could see what seemed to be clothes hanging in a small closet, but they didn’t look familiar to him. Was this somebody else’s room? If so, then what was he doing in it?

Just as abruptly as he’d awoken, the memory slammed back into his brain. He was in the Tower, in Yorknew. Iron Man had rescued him from Sanctuary, and had brought him here, leaving him under the watchful eye of Pepper Potts. He’d had a bad reaction to a painting that had been in the living area, and he’d come in here and fallen asleep...

Curious now, Bucky looked the room over again. It was just as neutral and pristine as the rest of the residence, with the painting on the wall opposite the bed providing a splash of colour. He was careful as he looked at it, but the lush swamp greenery didn’t upset his equilibrium like the view from Sanctuary had done.

Making a mental note to ask Pepper if it could be swapped out, or at least removed, he slid off the bed to stand upright. Almost immediately, he pulled a face. He’d fallen asleep in his clothes, which had been coated in dust from the madcap journey from Sanctuary. Now the bedclothes were coated in it, too, and _he_ felt just as grimy. Removing the clothing and washing himself was easy, but then what was he supposed to do? He didn’t even know if he could wash clothes here, or whether there was some kind of communal laundry room elsewhere in the Tower. And if the latter, was he supposed to do his own laundry, or was there someone who’s job it was?

And, of course, the biggest problem. What was he supposed to _wear_ once he was clean again?

_Wait a minute…_ The closet that he’d seen before caught his eye again. Bucky hesitated, but then decided that it must be something they’d put in _all_ the rooms, since it was very unlikely that anyone would be ending up here with full wardrobes of their own. No doubt those who travelled out here ensured they travelled light, and people that the Rebels “liberated” from Sanctuary weren’t exactly given time to pack anything.

He crossed the room and stood in front of the closet, eyeing its depths warily. He wasn’t sure he wanted to dive into whatever clothing was available out here – because would the Rebels have thought to get a proper clothing maker? – but if he ever wanted to get out of his current lot, then he didn’t have a lot of choice right now.

To his surprise – and no small amount of relief – the clothing wasn’t as bad as he’d feared. It was a variety of styles, from casual everyday to more formal things, in solid colours that were either dark or neutral. There was also a range of different sizes, and Bucky wondered what he was supposed to do with the ones that wouldn’t fit him. Was he just supposed to leave it in the closet for whenever someone else might use this set of rooms? Would Pepper or the housekeeper – _damn it, Bucky had forgotten her name already_ – come in and remove them, or did Bucky have to put the stuff outside his room and _then_ they’d remove them?

Thinking of the woman Pepper had said ran the ‘housekeeping side’, it made Bucky wonder just what that entailed. Was the Tower run like the hotels the old stories described? Did a team enter his room when he wasn’t there to clean up after him as though he didn’t exist here? Did they just come in when he asked for them? Or did they not come in at all, and _he_ was responsible for everything?

His thoughts went in circles for a little while, giving him questions and demanding answers that he didn’t have. Eventually, he realised that he’d probably been stood in front of this closet for far too long, no doubt gazing off into the distance like an idiot.

“Focus,” he whispered harshly to himself, and gave his head a brisk shake, trying to throw off the useless, spiralling thoughts. “Clothes, wash, food.” The other stuff could come later. He reached, almost automatically, for clothing that was black; it appeared that he wasn’t comfortable with clothes that didn’t allow him to duck into shadows for cover.

_Or you’re not comfortable with clothing that doesn’t hide the stains,_ some little voice in the back of his head murmured.

Bucky pointedly ignored it.

The washroom was yet another blindingly neutral room, but the tub was big enough to fit three grown people in it, and he could have happily stayed in it for hours, if not days, if only the water had remained hot for that long. He had to remind himself that he didn’t know how easily renewable Yorknew’s water supply was; Sanctuary collected the rainwater that fell, and they had large tanks that their water circled through to be purified. They also had access to a large underground river that had been discovered just a few years back.

Reluctantly, and far too quickly, Bucky hauled himself out of the tub again and dried himself off. The new clothing he’d picked out didn’t quite fit him right – it was obviously designed for someone who had a much slimmer build than he did – but he thought he looked decent enough to venture out of his apartment in search of food anyway.

Opening the stairway door into the Hub, Bucky was surprised all over again at the amount of people that were moving through it. Surely not _all_ of these people had come from Sanctuary. He paused in the doorway, trying to get a sense of what was happening and who the best person to speak to was.

“Good morning! Mr Barnes, I presume,” a cheerful female voice said from beside him, and Bucky jumped. He hadn’t even noticed anyone approaching.

“Uh, yes, that’s me,” he said, and turned his head to look at the speaker. A woman that was somehow too young to give the impression of ‘motherly’ and yet did so anyway stood beside him, a pile of linen in her arms.

She smiled at him, and jostled the material into just one arm so she could present her other hand to him. “May Parker,” she introduced herself, as Bucky gingerly shook her hand. “Pepper said she’d mentioned me to you, and that I should keep an eye out for you. I run the housekeeping for the Tower, so if there’s ever anything you need for your rooms, just let me know.” She paused and ran a quick glance over him. “I see you found the emergency closet. If you come see me whenever you’re ready, we’ll get you measured properly, then we can get you something that actually fits.”

Bucky cast a quick glance down at himself, as though unsure of what he’d put on less than half an hour ago. “It’s fine, ma’am,” he said, roughly. Sure, these clothes weren’t the best, but he didn’t want to burden anyone else with more work on his behalf.

“Nonsense!” May shook her head. “That’s what we’re here for; ensuring that our residents have what they need, when they need it. Stark Tower prides itself—”

“Stark?” Bucky interrupted, then flushed at his rudeness. “I apologise, ma’am, but . . . _Stark_ Tower?” he repeated. Everyone in Sanctuary knew that a Stark had caused the devastation to the outside world; it was a major part of what history books they had managed to put together. There were rumours that the youngest member of the Stark family at the time had taken Sanctuary with the rest of them, but nobody had ever been able to provide proof of that. Even if it had been true, there was nobody with that name there now.

May’s gaze turned wary. “Yes. This is Stark Tower,” she confirmed. “Had nobody mentioned it to you before?”

Bucky shook his head. “No, ma’am. I didn’t realise there were any Starks still living,” he said. It was always possible that there _weren’t_ any Starks still around, but then why name a Tower after them if they were all gone? _Perhaps they want to be reminded of what NOT to do…_

“Hmm.” May made a humming noise, but whatever she might have been about to say was pre-empted by Bucky’s stomach making a loud growling sound. Bucky flushed again and clapped a hand over it as if that would muffle the noise.

“Uh, sorry, ma’am,” he said, sheepishly.

The housekeeper just laughed at him, though not unkindly. “I think,” she said, “that I should stop gossiping like an old woman and show you the food areas.”

Bucky tried not to be too eager as he nodded his head, but he felt as though he hadn’t eaten in _days_. “Thank you, ma’am,” he said.

May turned away to one of the doors leading out of the Hub, then glanced back over her shoulder at him as he followed her. “Really, stop with the whole ‘ma’am’ nonsense,” she said, briskly. “It’s perfectly alright if you call me May.”

He wasn’t sure he _could_. It felt disrespectful to think about calling her by her first name, even if she had just given permission. But she didn’t make a fuss when it became clear that the name wasn’t going to come rolling off his tongue. Instead, she just turned her gaze forward again, shaking her head and muttering something that included the phrase “dang old-timers” that Bucky tried his best not to hear.

She led him down a short hallway and through a set of double doors that opened out into yet another large and airy room. This one, too, was full of people, sitting in groups at tables laid out in no particular pattern. The far end of the room had an open hatch in the wall, and food seemed to be being served through it.

“Here.” May tucked her arm through one of his, tugging him to one side just in time to avoid someone carrying far too many trays to be able to see clearly. “This is the Eatery,” May said. “It’s open pretty much all day, every day, although obviously there’s less choice at silly hours such as three in the morning. There will probably be some sort of payment system set up eventually, but the bigwigs are still debating about whether that will include Tower residents and if so, for how much. But for now, it’s free to everyone. So if you decide you don’t feel like cooking for yourself in your room, or just want some company, then feel free to drop by. Oh!” She slid her arm free of Bucky’s and waved at someone across the room. “Excuse me,” she said. “There’s someone over there I need to see. Remember, come see me when you have a minute and we can get you measured up.”

He didn’t even have a chance to respond to that before she was bustling off, nimbly darting her way between people and tables.

Making his way over to the hatch, Bucky studied the plates that everyone had as he passed, trying to get a sense of just what was available on offer. By the time he actually reached the serving area, he felt overwhelmed and out of his depth. There was just _so much_ food, some of it stuff that he’d never seen before. Being in a mountain, Sanctuary was limited in what foodstuffs they could make. Even utilising the outside environment, crops and animals didn’t fare too well on the rocky land.

“Haven’t decided what you want yet, huh? Yeah, me neither,” a voice piped up from just behind Bucky. He jumped, startled, and found himself spinning and falling into a defensive crouch before his brain had time to catch up to what his body was doing.

A teenage boy smiled sheepishly at him, hands held out to show he was weaponless. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you,” the boy said. “I just thought you looked a bit . . . lost. I’m Peter, Peter Parker.”

“Bucky,” said Bucky, automatically, as he straightened up again and tried to ignore all the attention that had turned in their direction. “Wait a minute, Parker?” he asked. “Are you related to May?”

The boy – Peter – smiled even wider, his gaze turning fond. “Yeah, she’s my aunt,” he said. “That’s why I came over; I saw her lead you in. Here.” He took an exaggeratedly careful step to the side and leaned around Bucky to scoop up a plate through the serving hatch. “I’ll get you started, and then you can decide what you like.”

Bucky watched as Peter quickly moved through the serving line, scooping a tiny bit of almost everything onto the plate. Apparently, Peter thought he still had the hollow leg that all teenage boys had.

“C’mon!” Peter reached out for Bucky’s arm, then paused. He tilted his head at Bucky, clearly asking if it was okay to touch him. Bucky nodded, and Peter lightly gripped his arm, gently tugging in the direction he wanted Bucky to move in. He led the way through the maze of tables towards one that was miraculously empty in a corner. “You’re lucky,” the boy said, as he slid the plate onto the table and gestured for Bucky to take the seat in the corner. “Most people are still getting used to the daylight, so they gather round the window tables. But Iron Man said there’d probably be people like you, who weren’t comfortable out in the open, so a couple of tables were put in the corners, too. They hardly ever get used.”

Bucky examined the foodstuff in front of him, before reaching for something that looked rather like a tomato, except a lot bigger and a more vibrant red than he’d ever seen one before. “Iron Man?” he asked, sniffing at the item before taking a bite, and almost moaning at the burst of flavour across his tongue. “Iron Man’s here that often?” he managed to get out once he’d finished the tomato.

Peter shrugged, still smiling. “Yeah, he’s here almost all the time. Well,” he added, “whenever he’s not at the Compound, anyway.” This time, Bucky scooped up a forkful of mashed potato. It looked – and absolutely was, he discovered – much fluffier than the rock-like substance that passed for it back in Sanctuary. “He brings new people back here,” Peter continued, watching in amusement as Bucky eagerly bit into something else, then immediately pulled a disgusted face and spat it back out again.

“He brought you back here?” Bucky enquired.

The smile didn’t quite fall from Peter’s face, but it certainly dimmed. “Yeah,” he said, quietly. “Me and Aunt May. We were about two days away from having to move to the bottom of Sanctuary.”

Bucky frowned. That seemed . . . odd. Obviously, closer to the surface – and natural light – was better for young people, so families with children were almost guaranteed a home in the upper levels of the mountain, even if that came with a hefty price tag. “What happened? If you don’t mind me asking?” he added, suddenly aware that his question was unnecessarily nosy, if not outright rude, especially considering he’d only just met the boy.

Peter shrugged. “My parents died when I was a kid, so my aunt and uncle took me in. We weren’t right on the surface – Uncle Ben didn’t make enough for that – but we were still close enough for day trips every few weeks. And then . . . Uncle Ben got robbed.” Peter’s voice broke. “He died.”

“I’m so sorry,” Bucky told him, wishing he hadn’t asked.

“After that,” Peter continued, swallowing past an obvious lump in his throat, “no matter what Aunt May tried, things just kept getting worse and worse, and we had to keep moving further and further from the surface. And then,” the boy’s expression brightened again, “the Rebels came to the area where we’d been living, and Iron Man offered us the chance to leave.”

_What a choice_, Bucky thought. To stay somewhere where your living conditions were already hard and likely to get worse in the extremely near future, or leave and enter the wider world that you had no knowledge of and possibly no skills to survive in.

Except obviously May and Peter – and everyone else in the Tower – _were_ surviving. Were thriving, even. Stories around Sanctuary always made it seem as though outside was a barren, toxic-stricken wasteland that only crazy people like the Rebels would think of living in.

_Something is not right._

Bucky pushed that thought away, not ready to take a closer look at it just yet, especially when Peter’s surprisingly shrewd gaze was still on him as he finished off the plate of food.

“You good?” the boy asked when it looked as though Bucky had finally finished. “Or do you want something else?”

Bucky considered this, testing out the thought of actually being _allowed_ to have more food. His body was all for it, wanting to catch up on the nutrition and calories it hadn’t been allowed to have before, but his brain was wiser than that. If he gorged himself then he’d only make himself sick. “No,” he replied to Peter, eventually. “I’m good.”

Peter just nodded, not looking in the least bit surprised. “Okay,” he said and pushed back his chair. “Plates go back into the hatch over there. I’m meeting up with a couple of friends, so I have to go now. Hopefully I’ll see you around?”

“More than likely,” Bucky agreed, and he wasn’t even lying, although why he expected himself to, he couldn’t say. He returned Peter’s wave as the youth made his way out of the eating area, tossing waves and greetings to other people as he went.

Sighing to himself, Bucky rose to return his plate to the serving hatch. _Oh, to be that young and naïve again!_

* * *

Two days later, Bucky had finally ventured outside. It might have taken longer, except it had taken Bucky all of about two hours to really explore what he could of the Tower, and once he’d done that then he had nothing else to do except sit in his apartment and stare at the walls.

It had taken him twenty minutes to get bored.

So he’d forced himself to leave the Tower. Most of the buildings surrounding it had been completed but were obviously empty. They looked to be office-type buildings, and Bucky wondered if whoever had been in charge of the construction efforts had been anticipating a large surge in businesses. Or maybe the Rebels had instructed it done, for whatever reason of their own. Bucky freely admitted he probably hadn’t thought of _every_ possible business there could ever be, but surely there wouldn’t be enough to fill even just a few of these buildings?

_Maybe those groups who live elsewhere have different kinds of skills,_ a small voice whispered in Bucky’s mind. Normally he ignored that voice, but this time it had a point. They had _known_ Sanctuary wasn’t the only holdout; the devastation was reportedly much less the further away from this area a person got. The area now known as Yorknew had been the centre of it all.

_Then why have we never sent messengers to scout and explore?_ the voice whispered again, but this time Bucky banished it firmly to the depths of his mind. He didn’t want to start looking closely at Sanctuary’s flaws.

Several streets away, he came across a team who were clearing an area in preparation for a new building. Bucky waved at the person who looked to be in charge of the operation. “You need any more hands?” he called.

The man studied him carefully, for long enough that Bucky began to wonder if he should just turn around and leave again, or if he perhaps had something stuck on his face.

“If you can shift rubble, we’d be glad of the help,” the man said eventually, and stuck a hand out to Bucky. “Hogan’s the name. I’m in charge of the building crews.”

“Bucky Barnes,” Bucky said, giving the man’s hand a brisk shake. Hogan gave him an unreadable look.

“Yes, I know who you are,” he admitted. “Pepper told me, as did To-_Iron Man_. You can start over there.” Hogan pointed to where two men were already at working shifting the large chunks of rubble. “If you need a break, there’s a water station set up over that way.”

Bucky nodded in thanks and made his way over to his assigned spot, his mind turning over Hogan’s verbal slip-up. _‘To-Iron Man.’_ Pepper had done the same thing, several times. Obviously Iron Man wasn’t the Rebel Leader’s _actual_ name, but it still seemed strange that people here would be so obviously _friendly_ with the Rebels. Weren’t they aware of the chaos the group caused to those still living in Sanctuary, or did they just not care once they weren’t there themselves?

Knowing better than to say any of that out loud before getting the lay of the land, he threw himself into the physical task of shifting rubble that had been undisturbed for decades. Some of it fell apart almost as soon as he touched it, but some of it required real effort to move it.

He didn’t realise that anything out of the ordinary was happening until he hefted a large rock into his arms and turned to move it elsewhere, and discovered two of the nearby men gaping at him. Bucky gave himself a quick once over. Aside from being coated in less dust than most of the people surrounding him, he didn’t think anything warranted that amount of surprise.

“Something the matter?” he asked, curiously.

Flushing hotly at being caught out, both young men – not more than boys, really – shook their heads wildly and scurried off. Out of the corner of his eye, Bucky could see them making a beeline for Hogan, and what looked to be a tense conversation took place.

A frisson of unease slithered its way down his spine. What had he done now? _Something’s given you away_, the voice in his head murmured, but that just worried Bucky even more. What would he have to give away?

To his faint surprise, and even greater relief, Hogan sent the boys off, shaking his head at them. He didn’t approach Bucky, although he did give him a considering glance before turning away to deal with someone else.

By the time the sun began to set, and work stopped, Hogan had still not approached him, and Bucky was almost vibrating out of his skin he was so tense. He didn’t like it, not one bit. Being noticed, for any reason, was _not good_. He couldn’t say why, but he knew it wasn’t. The thought gave him a brief flash of memory; somewhere that he somehow knew was deep in Sanctuary, somewhere that should have been dark but was lit brighter than even the outside world, some kind of mechanical contraption sitting in the middle of the room with wires going every which way from it. It seemed inert and innocuous sitting there, but even the thought of it was enough to make his heart start to thump harder, and his breath caught in his throat.

Something clattered nearby, and Bucky was jolted back to the present with a gasp. His heartbeat was hard enough that he could feel it pounding at the base of his neck.

“You okay?” Hogan was asking him. His hands were very carefully, and very obviously, being kept at his sides, showing both that he held no weapon and that he wasn’t planning to touch Bucky. Bucky was glad of it; he rather felt as though he’d react violently to any hand laid on him at that precise moment.

He gave Hogan a short nod in response. He wasn’t okay, really, nowhere near, but he’d be damned if he _told_ anyone that.

Hogan nodded back, briefly. “Okay,” he said. “We’re all heading back to the Tower. You comin’, or makin’ your own way?”

“I’ll follow in a bit.” The response was out almost before he’d made up his mind.

Hogan nodded again, unsurprised and unconcerned. “Well, if you want to help out again tomorrow, we’ll be in this same area ‘bout an hour after sunrise,” he said.

“...Sure,” Bucky responded after a moment. He remained in place as Hogan disappeared off with the rest of the people who’d been helping. Shadows were stretching out all around him, the setting sun making what had been familiar just seconds ago suddenly look strange and out of place.

Strangely enough, Bucky wasn’t worried. He had no idea what, if anything, lived out here that wouldn’t approach when the area was full of noisy humans, but deep inside there was a confidence that anything that tried to take _him_ on would sorely regret it.

He spent the next couple of hours mentally and physically mapping out the streets that surrounded the Tower. He rather thought he’d come back and do it again in the daylight but doing it in the dark first made him more comfortable, as this way there was less room for error if he ever had to make his way . . . somewhere.

When he finally returned to the Tower, he had to wait nearby for several minutes to allow his eyesight to adjust again. Whoever had built the Tower had obviously figured out some kind of electric light, since the lights were shining steadily and much brighter than flame could do, and Bucky had winced when he’d turned a corner and found himself unexpectedly bathed in bright light. He’d hurriedly retreated again and cursed himself for not thinking of that.

Once he’d stopped feeling as though someone was stabbing him in the eyes, he’d entered the Tower. The Hub was surprisingly empty of people, despite the fact it wasn’t that late. A loud burst of noise from further inside the Tower made Bucky realise that there was a special gathering going on. He briefly debated going to see what it was, and maybe even joining in, but his socialness had limits, and it seemed he’d already reached them for that day.

No doubt young Peter would happily tell him everything in the morning, anyway, even if Bucky didn’t ask. Giving himself a brisk nod, Bucky slipped upstairs to his apartment.

* * *

Bucky hadn’t been expecting to be the first person to show up the next morning, but he _definitely_ hadn’t been expecting to be beaten there by a strange metal machine.

Puzzled, he came to a halt, and watched as the machine trundled back and forth, carrying one piece of rubble at a time in a three-pronged grip, from one pile to another.

“He’s doing well, isn’t he?” asked a voice from beside him. Bucky glanced over to see Iron Man standing there, hands planted on his hips as he watched the machine move. “I was a bit worried; he’s not the cleverest creation, but he does his best.”

“You made it?” Bucky asked. He turned back to study the machine again. “What for?”

“Him.” Even without looking, Bucky could tell Iron Man was scowling at him. “I made _him_. And to see if I could.”

Bucky turned to look at him again. The rising sun was shining through Iron Man’s hair, making it look even more as if his entire head was on fire. The expression on his face – behind his annoyance at Bucky – was _pride_. It looked a great deal like _fatherly_ pride, and, for some reason, that surprised Bucky. Everyone in Sanctuary knew about the machines that Iron Man made for the Rebels. Even after seeing Jarvis for himself, Bucky hadn’t considered that maybe Iron Man considered his creations to be more than just pieces of metal and wires.

“I’m sorry,” said Bucky. “_He_ is . . . amazing.”

The scowl immediately vanished from Iron Man’s face, leaving the pride much more visible. “He was my first attempt,” he admitted, watching as the machine jolted itself over a rock and almost dropped the bit of rubble it was holding. “I made a lot of mistakes. Most people would have scrapped him once they’d learnt how to do better, but I couldn’t do that to him.” He suddenly perked up. “You want to meet him?”

The sudden switch in conversation surprised Bucky, but he hastily gathered himself together again. “Sure,” he agreed, because really, as if there were any other answer that Iron Man would accept.

Iron Man gave a rolling, high-pitched whistle. The machine paused, turned its arm in their direction and then gave an almost identical whistle in response, before it dropped the rubble and began trundling in their direction.

It stopped in front of them and raised its claw up to Bucky’s eye-level, at which point he realised it had a camera attached just above the claw. The machine gave him a startlingly intense once-over, then it turned to Iron Man and nudged its claw against his arm, beeping at him in what seemed to be happiness.

Iron Man ran a hand over the claw and supporting strut, beaming at the machine. “Bucky, meet DUM-E,” he said. “DUM-E, this is Bucky.”

The claw tilted to look at him again. Bucky found himself holding his breath, actually hoping that the machine was going to like him. DUM-E beeped twice at him, then went back to bumping up against Iron Man, rather like a cat. Bucky blew out his breath in a relieved sigh; he’d apparently passed the test.

“Go on, better go back to work,” Iron Man said eventually, when DUM-E had nudged up so close to him that it’d almost knocked him over. “Before Happy arrives and sees you slacking off.”

The machine beeped in an offended manner, but obediently turned and trundled back to the pile of rubble it’d been sorting before, apparently ignoring the bit it had dropped when Iron Man had called it over.

Iron Man turned back to him, hands slipping into the pockets of his pants. “Happy tells me you were very helpful yesterday,” he began.

Bucky shrugged and ducked his head. “I hope so,” he said. “I was just doing whatever I could.”

“Hmm.” Iron Man studied him for a moment, but Bucky had no idea what he was looking for – or if he found it. “Well, DUM-E and I are going to be shifting some of the bigger, heavier stuff round the corner. You think you’d be able to help us there, too?”

“Ah, sure. I guess…” Bucky agreed, uncertainly. With DUM-E and whatever else Iron Man had put together for things like this, what help could _he_ possibly offer? Iron Man’s lips curled into a smirk as he saw Bucky’s dubious expression, but rather than say anything, he just tilted his head for Bucky to follow him and walked off in the direction of whatever he was planning on shifting. Bucky trailed after him, feeling uncomfortably like a duckling following its mother.

To his surprise, there were already people waiting when they turned the corner. Something inside him braced itself, suddenly much more alert than it had been up until now. _Trap!_ it hissed. _He led us into a trap..._

“These are some of my friends, they’ll be helping out, too,” Iron Man was saying. Bucky couldn’t help but notice that the Rebel Leader had positioned himself so that he could see both Bucky and his ‘friends’ . . . and so that his back was to neither of them. Who didn’t he trust? Bucky wondered. Or perhaps it was the paranoia of his position, since you surely didn’t rise to become the leader of a large group of rebels – and _stay_ the leader – by expecting everything to be all roses and sunshine. Iron Man waved a hand towards his friends, and Bucky realised he was still talking. “This is Bruce, who’s much stronger than he looks. This is Rhodey—”

“James, actually,” the man interrupted, with the ease of long familiarity. Iron Man didn’t protest, so Bucky presumed he was used to it. “But since that might get a bit confusing, you can call me Rhodes. Or War Machine.”

Iron Man looked as if he wanted to either pout or roll his eyes – or both together at the same time – but was forcibly keeping his expression straight. “This is Thor,” he continued, gesturing to the largest man Bucky had ever seen before. “And this...” He paused briefly. “Is Steve.”

The person that was apparently ‘Steve’ was almost as large as Thor, with the kind of blond hair and blue eyes that Bucky had heard was almost an American standard back in the days before the disaster happened. The sight of him was also causing weird things to happen in Bucky’s brain.

Clutching his head and groaning, Bucky fell to his knees. His mind was suddenly full of static, interspersed with random loud bangs and loud yells. Every so often, he’d see something flash past, but it was always so fast he never got a chance to see what it was before it was gone again.

Except The Chair. _That_ he saw often enough.

He could hear a distant babble of voices, but couldn’t make out who they were or what they were saying. He vaguely registered a hand that was urging him up and forwards somewhere.

“You knew this would happen!” he heard someone hiss from very close by.

“So did you,” was the equally clear response, and then something seemed to spark in his brain, and between one thought and the next, he was gone.

* * *

Bucky woke with a pounding headache and yet a strange feeling of absolute clarity. Even before he opened his eyes, he knew he was in an almost empty room, with some kind of monitoring equipment tracking his heartbeat, and an overwhelming sense of being watched.

Proof of this arrived two minutes later when, despite Bucky being sure that he hadn’t moved or changed his breathing or done anything else to show he was awake, the door opened and a set of footsteps casually made their way to him.

“You might as well open your eyes,” Iron Man said. “We know you’re awake.”

Keeping them closed for another minute, just to spite him, Bucky slowly allowed his eyes to open to slits. Iron Man was standing casually beside the slab he was lying on, seemingly not at all worried that Bucky might attack him.

Iron Man smirked at him. “Not going to ask what happened?” he asked, mockingly, then, with an abrupt sigh, he sobered. “I’m sorry about earlier,” he said. “But it seemed the best and quickest way to get things out in the open.” The Rebel obviously saw Bucky’s expression become confused, even as he tried his best to suppress any emotion that might show. “When we met, you never asked about how I found you.”

Bucky cast his mind back. “You said you caused an explosion,” he answered, gruffly, half convinced that this was yet another trap but unable to help himself from, figuratively, walking into it.

Iron Man sighed again and glanced around the room for something to sit on. The room was still empty though, so he ended up perching on the edge of what Bucky now realised was an actual bed. “And found you unconscious in the rubble,” he agreed. “But you never asked if I knew _how_ you ended up like that.”

Surprised, Bucky said nothing. He _hadn’t_ asked; he hadn’t even thought about it.

“My name – my _actual_ name,” began Iron Man, “is Tony Stark.” Bucky’s eyebrows shot up towards his hairline. “I know it’s touted that one of my ancestors was responsible for the devastation out here, but actually it was caused by a man called Stane, who worked with my relative.”

“Stane.” Bucky rolled the name around inside his mouth, and in his head, feeling the familiarity of it settle on and burn his tongue. “As in Obadiah Stane?” One of the ‘caretakers’ of Sanctuary.

“The very same.” Iron Man – _Tony_; now the slip-ups by Potts and Hogan suddenly made more sense. They were obviously very good friends of Stark – looked down at his hands. “You know that Sanctuary had weapons, so-called defences against anyone from outside coming to do us harm. I designed them; I built them. I was _proud_—” He spat the word, as if it was something horrible. “—of them. But one day, during what was supposed to be a routine inspection, one of them detonated. I was too close, and it almost killed me.”

He glanced up again at Bucky. “I won’t bore you with the whole sordid tale,” he said, “but there are places out there that are a lot more unsettled than we are, where people are constantly fighting each other. After the weapon . . . accident, I discovered that Stane, who was my godfather and business partner, was selling my weapons to people all over the place, as well as using them to dig deeper into Sanctuary.”

Bucky blinked at the flood of information, but still found himself baffled as to how that had led to him being found unconscious in the rubble of an explosion that _Stark_ had admittedly caused.

“I told him I was going to stop designing weapons.” Stark winced, his features turning pinched and haunted. “I was an idiot, and told him to his face that I knew what he was doing and that I wouldn’t allow it anymore, that I was stopping – _had_ stopped – designing weapons the instant I found out he was using me to line his pockets through destroying other people’s lives.”

“He didn’t like it.” Bucky didn’t need to even think about it to come to that conclusion. He was fairly sure that even a three year old child would know it.

Stark’s shoulders slumped. “Yeah. In fact, he disliked it so much that he tried to have me killed.” Stark’s gaze flickered up and over Bucky, and then skittered away again. “He had _you_ try to kill me.”

“What?” Bucky stared at him, stunned. _Him_?! He wasn’t an assassin! How the hell could anyone expect someone like him to kill someone like _Iron Man_?

Except . . . subconsciously he’d been noticing that the room they’d put him in was bare of anything that he could remotely use as a weapon against them, which meant that it was bare of anything that _Stark_ could use as a weapon _against_ _him_, which meant that Stark was currently the most vulnerable he’d likely to be for quite some time and therefore easy enough to get to and finish off the job he’d been hired for and apparently failed _miserably_...

And then the door to the room was opening, and coming through it was the large blond man that had been there when Stark had sprung his trap and had made everything in their head go haywire and _wait a minute, who was THEIR?! There shouldn’t be a THEIR in his head!_

Things went a bit blurry for Bucky after that, until he found himself abruptly pinned face-down on the floor, the blond man sitting on his back and wrenching one of his arms up until his shoulder felt on the verge of dislocating. Stark was crouched a little in front of him, his hand up and palm aimed at Bucky. He was holding one of the things that he’d used on the Patrolmen and the star in the middle of it was glowing brightly. Bucky remembered what it had done, and immediately fell still.

Stark lowered his hand cautiously a second later. “I think you can let go of his arm now,” he said to the blond man behind Bucky.

“Are you sure that’s safe?” the man asked, dubiously, but it was obvious that he didn’t really care about the answer, as he was already letting go. Bucky hissed in pain as his shoulder protested against the movement.

“I’m sorry, I really am,” said Stark, to Bucky this time. “I was trying to ease you into it, but _someone_—” He looked pointedly at the blond man. “—decided to burst in here before I gave the signal.” The man sighed, and lowered himself to sit on the floor, rubbing a hand over his face. “Let’s try again,” he suggested. “You may now realise, Bucky, that you were hired to kill me.”

He would have protested, but doing so seemed silly considering their current positions.

“Stane had already been searching for you for _years_,” Stark continued. “The weapon accident had been his attempt to do the job because he thought it was taking too long. But then he finally crossed paths with the people who had you—”

“Had me?” Bucky interrupted, almost involuntarily. “What do you mean, ‘people who had me’?”

The man on Bucky’s back shifted enough so that he was visible in Bucky’s peripheral vision. “You don’t remember me?” he asked, sounding crestfallen. Stark rolled his eyes.

Bucky managed to turn his head enough to look at the other man. Nothing about him looked in the least bit familiar. “Should I?” he asked. The other man’s expression fell even further.

“We grew up together, almost at the bottom of Sanctuary,” he said. “We were brothers in all but blood. ‘Till the end of the line.” He said it as though expecting it to produce an emotional outpouring from Bucky, but Bucky felt nothing and said as much.

“Anyway,” Stark continued, before the other man could carry on – or burst into tears. “It’ll take too long to explain the whole thing, but you were taken captive by a group who were working to turn Sanctuary into their own private fiefdom. Somehow, we don’t know how, they turned you into a weapon, their own elite assassin. When Stane fell in with this group, he borrowed you to complete the job on me. I was on a Rebel mission when you came across me. I recognised you – God knows Steve’s painted enough pictures of you – so when the explosion I set caught you in it and knocked you out, I decided to bring you to him.”

Bucky blinked at him. That seemed rather a dangerous thing to do, even for a Rebel. After all, he’d apparently already tried to kill Stark once… The thought of what might have happened if he’d woken up in that car _remembering_ that made him shudder.

“What do you plan to do with me now, then?” he asked, his voice so hoarse he almost couldn’t get the words out.

The man still sitting on his back made an indignant, horrified sound. “We don’t plan to _do_ anything with you, we aren’t that kind of people,” he started to protest, but Stark sighed and shook his head, and the man subsided into disgruntled muttering.

“We could always use more soldiers,” said Stark. He sounded casual, but his gaze was anything but, bright and intense. “The Caretakers and Gatekeepers have forgotten that their purpose is to _protect_ the people of Sanctuary. And we know of several excellent people who can help you recover and deal with what was done to you.”

Bucky considered the matter. According to Stark, he was dangerous. He didn’t remember that, and he didn’t remember the things that were likely going to set him off, which made him even _more_ dangerous, and a liability to be around. Really, the Rebel Leader should be throwing him into the deepest, darkest pit they could find.

Instead, he was offering purpose. _Trust_. The chance to build friendships such as he’d already seen between people like Hogan, Miss Potts and May Parker and that had been unconditionally offered to him already by Peter.

He suddenly recalled the painting that was hanging in the Hub at the Tower, the one that he’d almost been able to imagine himself in. _Perhaps_, he mused, _I can have something like that, after all._

He met Stark’s gaze again, and gave one sharp nod of agreement.

Stark grinned brightly. “Well, then!” he exclaimed, clapping his hands together. “Bucky Barnes, welcome to the Rebels!”


End file.
